AFFAIRS FOREIGN: Were Strikes on Ship Near Malta Opening Salvos of Israel’s Imminent Re-Occupation of Gaza?
Europe looks the other way, for now
VALLETTA, MALTA — The Israel Defense Forces sometimes defend in mysterious ways. Consider that the logo of the IDF’s elite naval commando unit, Shayetet 13, is not an obvious shark or trident, but rather the wings of a bat. Cue some unconfirmed aerial derring-do emanating from Israeli shores that is likely responsible for a recent under the radar drone attack on a vessel near the coast of Malta packed with aid for godforsaken Gaza.
That ship, the Conscience, was severely damaged after coming under attack from so-called loitering drones, and was still at sea days after the May 2 incident. Possibly the only thing that stopped the incident from generating more headlines was that there were no fatalities on board — and that too was likely no accident.
When an aid flotilla attempted to pierce a blockade of the Gaza Strip in 2010, Israeli forces stormed a Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, killing nine people on board and torpedoing Turkish-Israeli relations for years.
Fast forward to 2025 and Gaza is still under Israeli blockade, but maritime combat has evolved in a decade and a half — particularly in the arena of drone warfare.
According to Maltese authorities the ship, which was 16 miles away from Malta in international waters, was carrying 12 crew members and four civilians. Climate activist Greta Thunberg was supposed to have hopped on board, but that didn’t happen once a pair of explosions that rocked the boat — literally — about two minutes apart left two gaping holes in the deck and made mincemeat of the ship’s generator.
A statement from Freedom Flotilla Coalition read in part, “Armed drones attacked the front of an unarmed civilian vessel twice, causing a fire and a substantial breach in the hull.” The group blamed Israel. As of this week, the IDF had not responded to requests for comment.
Maybe, though, they don’t have to.
One of the peculiarities about Malta is that what it lacks in size it more than makes up for in location: pretty much at the dead center of the Mediterranean. On this parched island that famously repelled the Nazis and the Ottoman Turks before them, the only thing more reliable than the steady stream of monster cruise ships at Grand Harbor is the supply of juicy geopolitical rumors.
Sanctioned Russian oil trading in the middle of the night? We won’t go there. Israeli involvement in the frankly terrifying ship strike? Yes — if you listen not only to what officials say but what they don’t say.
Speaking to reporters outside the parliament building on Monday, Malta’s prime minister Robert Abela said of the incident, “if it was attacked, you are saying it was attacked. That is a fact that still needs to be determined.” He confirmed that the vessel’s mission was humanitarian in nature, but refused to speculate on Israeli involvement in the attack on it.
That hasn’t stopped others from doing so.
The Times of Malta first reported that “suicide drones” or loitering missiles caused the blast aboard the ship. These are the kinds of weapons that hover over a target for a period of time before striking, in a particularly nasty form of asymmetric warfare that has been a staple of the ongoing battle between Russia and Ukraine.
An inquiry to the Maltese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ian Borg, was not immediately answered, but on Tuesday he refused to confirm if Israel had asked Malta to block the ship before it was to set out for Gaza.
The island’s newspaper of record, in the meantime, quoted an anonymous maritime security expert who concurred that it looked like “a strategic military attack intended to disable the vessel and not kill those on board. In other words, it’s a warning not to proceed with the voyage.”
The images of the damage shared by the NGO that organized the aid mission are consistent with a strike by an Orbiter 1K, a compact, electric-powered loitering munition designed by Israel's Aeronautics Ltd. These are electric-powered loitering munitions designed for precision strikes and “soft-shell attack missions” with minimal collateral damage.
The newspaper reported separately that an Israeli military airplane circled Malta for hours before the flotilla was hit.
With the exception of Turkey, which has accused Israel of being behind the strike, other Mediterranean powers that have tiptoed around the assignment of blame. For Malta as well as Greece, which has tight security cooperation with Israel, anything related to Gaza is a political hot potato.
A major crisis may have been averted simply because the ship didn’t sink, and activists on board have already started making their way to Malta to fly back home.
But all this comes as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has laid out a plan for Israel to conquer not just some of the Gaza Strip, but all of it.
While there are some understandable security considerations that factor into that plan, there are also two million people in Gaza who are on the verge of the greatest forced population transfer in modern times. Not everybody in Israel is thrilled about that.
The attack on the ship Conscience showed who’s the boss now in the Mediterranean — and it isn’t Malta, or Italy or Greece for that matter. As the eastern flank of the wine-dark sea looks set to erupt in ways no one can foresee, will Europe’s patience with Jerusalem’s rage finally start to thin out?